Mercedes Wants You to Share Your Car

Cailey Rizzo·Dec 16, 2016

One of the greatest parts of modern living is that if you don’t have something, you can easily get it. But the absolute best part is that you don’t even really need to buy the things you don’t have — you can just rent them. You can use apps to borrow almost anything you can think of, from clothing to actual homes. And now Mercedes is launching a service called Croove that will let people share cars.

Basically, it’s kind of like an Airbnb for cars — anybody who owns a car can rent it out to people whenever they’re not using it. The only qualification is that the vehicle must be “in good condition and no more than 15 years old.” After filling out a profile on the Croove app or online, the car is ready to go.

The only qualifications for renters is that they be at least 21 years old and have a license. Once they find a car they like on Croove, they contact the owner to arrange a key exchange or pickup and delivery. Mercedes is even looking to develop a PIN-based keyless system so renters wouldn’t even need to pick up keys. They could just punch a PIN in their app and the car would open.

The only problem is that so far the service is only available in Germany, so if you want to share a Mercedes, you’re going to either have to pick up and leave or hope that it soon launches stateside.